Reviews
Katherine Waters
The BBC excels at a very particular kind of drama, namely one where production values overawe dramatic content. Its version of The Woman in White (BBC One) proves no exception. Our hero is Walter, a bemused sappy painter played by ex-Eastender Ben Hardy. Not much recommends his character except his ornately Italian friend Pesca who sets up an apparently cushy job for him in the rural retreat of Limmeridge (“When you make it to the top, remember you friend Pesca at the bottom!” he exclaims, only partly in jest). The role consists of restoring some ageing prints while tutoring the daughters of Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ed Byrne is a worried parent. Thankfully his two young sons are hale and hearty, but he is concerned he may be bringing up a pair of pampered, Lord Fauntleroy youngsters, and in Spoiler Alert he ponders the differences between his experience of being parented as a child in the 1980s, and now being a dad himself.He wonders if his generation of parents may be giving a little too much to their offspring in material terms – “Social services send a drone to check you have a full-size trampoline in the back garden,” he says. And it’s not just ownership of a bunch of stuff that delineates the Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Featuring two Russian composers, the two halves of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s programme could hardly have been more different. In the first, pianist Xiayin Wang (pictured below) joined the RSNO for Scriabin’s florid, rarely-heard Piano Concerto. The orchestral sound under Peter Oundjian – in what is his final season as Music Director – was lean yet strong, as the vast number of violins played as a single, powerful muscle.While this made for a captivating orchestral presence, Wang’s solo playing was for most of the first movement either overshadowed or downright drowned out. Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Back in the early Sixties Lucian Freud was living in Clarendon Crescent, a condemned row of houses in Paddington which were gradually being demolished around him. The neighbourhood was uncompromisingly working class and to his glee his neighbours included characters from the seamier side of the criminal world. It was around the time of his fortieth birthday when the wrecking balls drew near and, Bentley-owning but broke and generally neglected by the art world, his work began to develop into what is now known as late Freud. In relative obscurity eking out extravagance from precarity and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Playing Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom on 8 September 1974, the New York Dolls opened their first set of the evening with three cover versions. Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man” was followed by The Shangri-Las’ “(Give Him a) Great Big Kiss” and Otis Redding’s “Don’t Mess With Cupid”. They were acknowledging that blues, girl group records and soul were integral to who they were. A pretty comprehensive sweep considering they were a prime influence on the purportedly reductive punk rock. Once the building blocks were revealed to the audience, Vancouver witnessed them lurching into their own " Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Brahms violin sonatas make a perfect spring evening recital. The Second and Third were inspired by a summer retreat, but all three are light, bright and with direct melodic appeal. Violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien conveyed that carefree spirit perfectly, the long melodic lines simply but elegantly shaped and the accompanying textures always carefully calibrated. They also made the most of the occasional dramatic outbursts, providing valuable contrast, while always maintaining the essential intimacy of expression.Brahms (pictured below) places much of the violin Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Conflict and comedy can be unpredictable bedfellows, and Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson’s 2014 play occasionally risks overstretching itself in its attempts to reconcile the two – although its immediate context, the world of office politics, has a rich history of showing humanity at its worst, and such ghastliness can be painfully funny. At the same time Johnson explores a much more profound strand of social unease, the echt-American issue that is racism, the depths and ramifications of which sometimes sit uneasily with some of the surrounding elements of Rasheeda Speaking.But if there Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Home From Home, written by newcomers Chris Fewtrell and Simon Crowther, first saw life as a pilot in the BBC’s Landmark Sitcom Season in 2016, the channel's search for new and original content for its schedules. Well, new it may be, but original it ain’t – yet don’t let that put you off. It’s a decent enough run-through of several sitcom tropes, with Johnny Vegas as its everyman hero.The set-up is that underachiever but hard-working northerner Neil Hackett (Vegas), the manager of a newsagent at a motorway services (“northbound and southbound”), has scrimped and saved with wife Fiona (Niky Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Record Store Day 2018 – Saturday April 21 – is upon us. It should really be Record Shop Day 2018 as this is the UK but let’s not quibble. Instead, put aside cynicism about major labels cashing in, wander down to the nearest record shop – and, happily, new record shops are starting to pop up a lot lately – then rifle through the racks. Below are the releases that reached theartsdesk on Vinyl, quite a few of them rare as hens’ teeth. Dig in, see what takes your fancy, then go out and find them, out there on the high streets and back streets...theartsdesk on Vinyl's FAVOURITE RELEASE FOR RECORD Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’s a serious film to be made about the German occupation of the Channel Islands. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is not that film. The absolute gobful of a title more than hints at artery-furring whimsy. Its provenance is explained in the opening sequence when, after dark on the island in 1941, a tipsy, bucolic crew of Guernsey residents are apprehended for breaking the Wehrmacht's curfew. They explain that they have convened to discuss literature in a book club for which they instantly extemporise a name. In truth, they’ve been gleefully glugging home-brewed gin while Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Back by feverishly popular demand, Jim Steinman’s mega-musical is no longer in danger of alarming unsuspecting opera-goers. A year on from its Coliseum debut, this indisputably bonkers show moves to the West End venue it was surely always destined for – that lingeringly inhabited by its rock operatic forebear. The Queen is dead; long live the Loaf.Unlike most jukebox musicals, this one originated as a theatrical concept back in the Seventies, then became an unlikely hit album instead. Unfortunately, that hasn’t blessed it with, say, a decent script, coherent plotting or satisfying Read more ...
Owen Richards
As if the real world wasn’t scary enough... Ghost stories are en vogue at the moment, and after the BBC’s hit-and-miss Requiem, Channel 4 brings True Horror to the small screen – a collection of "real" ghost stories, told by witness interviews and dramatised with a decent budget. And just like Requiem, our first tale took us to the rolling hills of Wales.Wales, according to the wide-eyed Pastor Matt Tricker, is a land of old gods and occultists – a description which doesn’t match my Cardiff suburban upbringing, but who knows what happened behind closed doors? The Rich family certainly could Read more ...